How much poop can humans safely eat?
Kent Sepkowitz, a physician in New York City who writes about medicine, writes in Slate.com that,"… one year ago, the now-famous E. coli outbreak arising from contaminated spinach rattled the natural-food industry and gave carnivores a moment of schadenfreude. The story had the heartbreaking elements we have come to dread: A young child eats something mundane and dies a horrid death. Boom, gone. I have (unsuccessfully) treated one such case and rate it as perhaps the most chilling moment of my career.
"With every outbreak, the same question sounds: Why can't we keep the food chain clean? … The best response to E. coli and the other pathogens that cause food poisoning is to recognize, humbly, that we can get the food supply almost perfectly clean, but never completely. There's just too much crap out there: human crap, horse crap, cow crap, pig crap. In the feces of these and other animals are trillions of infectious agents (bacteria, viruses, fungi, worms, and everything else that upsets the stomach). Try as we may to contain the mess, we can never win. Pig dung fouls rivers; cow crap seeps into water tables; human shit kicks back every time heavy rains overwhelm a sewage system's filtration capacity. …
"Rather than frantically throwing money at new ways to eradicate the pathogens that reside in shit, we should fund the boring scientists who focus on untangling the intricacies of the gut's immune system. Labs, answer this: How much shit can we safely eat and, as importantly, how much must we eat to remain healthy?"
While there is some truth in the doctor's comments, humans just aren't smart enough to figure out who is genetically susceptible to the various nasties out there. Maybe the population's immunity can be increased by exposure to some cryptosporidium or salmonella or whatever, but individuals are gonna die. We're gonna lose a few. And we don't know who those few are.
So while we're figuring that out, we have a responsibility to use the science we know to reduce the number of people who get sick from the food and water they consume. And don't eat poop.
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Sorry Doug, but you're too easy on this guy.
He's got to be joking or maybe "physician" doesn't mean what it used to! I understand natural selection and the process of evolution, but I don't intend to practice it on my kids. Go to any food testing laboratory and ask them how many microbes (bacteria, yeast, mould) do they find in any sandwich, hamburger, carton of milk, tub of yoghurt, piece of natural chesse, or bottle of cloudy (unpastueirised beer) beer. In the great majority of instances these foods are completely safe and nowhere near sterile. We are all eating millions of microbes each day. Our mouths are full of them regardless. Chew gum and you're feeding and growing the microbes that live between your teeth! There is no way that our modern lifestlye does not provide enough challenges to our immune system. We divide microbes into three broad groups, the good, the bad and the ugly - yes just like the famous spagetti western! The "good" are actually good, useful and necessary for us. Go ahead eat more of them! The "ugly" are the spoilage microbes that make food spoil or go off. They make our food unsaleable or unpalatable. The "bad" are the pathogens that make us sick and kill us. Play with them at your peril. Some produce highly toxic poisons that are amoung the most potent toxins known. I know that if I expose my kids to pathogens then it is highly likely there will be another death like the one that Mr Sepkowitz witnessed. Life is all about managing risk. Do you teach your kids to cross at the lights or to run and dodge the traffic? Do you wash your hands before eating or do you eat off the floor? These are the easy questions because we can make some assessment of the relative risk. The hard questions are about food made by people or organisations that we do not know - cafes, restaurants, food manufacturers, in our home town or in a distant part of the world. How can we get enough information to make a call on whether they are doing the right "food safety" stuff to protect us and our families? I know there are a lot of people working hard to make good safe food. If we can identify those people, reward and encourage them, then we are likely on a better and more enduring evolutionary path.
good point. However there are certain companies out there working on food safety with the use of nano technology. They will be programmed to identify cetain viruses and microbes and these "small computers" will work to ellimiante them. Now they are in the early stages but someday I do not see why not they would work, and would substantially reduce a majority of food and even waterbourne illnesses.
If youd like to find out more just google them :) thanks!